Major Article
Fear for CoViD-19 and reluctance to work among health care workers during the epidemic, a prospective monocentric cohort study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajic.2021.10.042Get rights and content

Highlights

  • SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence remained rather stable between study phases.

  • CoViD-19 fear and reluctance to work significantly increased between study phases.

  • Reluctance to work was related to study phase, gender, PPE, and CoViD-19 education.

  • CoViD-19 fear was related to study phase, gender, CoViD-19 education and exposure.

Abstract

Background

Health care workers (HCW) are facing the Coronavirus disease 2019 (CoViD-19) epidemic. Consequently, psychological impairments have been reported. However, literature showed controversial results on the relationship between gender, frontline HCW, and psychological impairments. This study aims to investigate CoViD-19 fear and reluctance to work in HCW.

Methods

Employees who worked between April and October 2020 at the UZ Brussel were included. Data were prospectively collected in 2 phases through a survey together with serological tests. Sampling strategy was convenience sampling.

Results

About 2,336 employees completed the study and response rate was 70%. The prevalence of severe CoViD-19 fear in participants increased from 9% to 15%. Employees showing way less motivation rose from 9% to 14%. The seroprevalence was 7.4% and 7.9%. Multivariable analysis found a relation between reluctance to work, study phase, female gender, shortage of personal protective equipment, and poor education on CoViD-19. Furthermore, CoViD-19 fear was related to the study phase, older age, female gender, being second-line HCW, reported exposure to CoViD-19 during work, and insufficient education on CoViD-19.

Discussion

Seroprevalence remained rather stable, but fear and reluctance to work significantly increased. Differences in time of data collection together with epidemiological setting might be responsible for conflicting data reported in literature.

Conclusions

The evolution of the epidemiological setting might influence the results of studies investigating psychological impairments in HCW.

Key Words

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
Coronavirus disease 2019
Motivation to work
Fear for SARS-CoV-2
Hospital employees

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Conflicts of interests: All authors declare that they have no competing interests with the content published in this manuscript.

Funding: We declare to have applied for funding to “Wetenschappelijk Fonds Willy Gepts”. Thanks to the received support we could carry out the current study. Grant number: WFWG2021.

Consent for publication: All included participants gave consent for publication through written informed consent. All the authors read, approved the final version of this manuscript, and gave consent for publication.

Availability of data and materials: The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Authors’ contributions: MM: concept, study design, data analysis and interpretation, writing and revision; EVC and DDG: study design, data collection, writing and revision; SVL: data analysis and interpretation, writing and revision; DP: concept, study design, writing and revision; SDA: concept, study design, data collection, writing and revision.

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